BACK TO BAY STREET — Six years of Parliament Hill was sufficient for CLAIRE SEABORN, who served as Energy and Natural Resources Minister JONATHAN WILKINSON's chief of staff for the past two and a half. Seaborn just started a new gig with business law firm Torys. One measure of a chief's influence is the turnout at their going-away party — at Rabbit Hole on Sparks, typically, if organizers can guarantee they'll fill the basement space. Both of Seaborn's Hill bosses, Wilkinson and CATHERINE MCKENNA, showed up to bid her adieu. ANITA ANAND and SEAN FRASER were in the crowd. BRIAN CLOW, too, alongside assorted chiefs and senior bureaucrats. As she set off on a return to the law, the Toronto-based Seaborn offered Playbook a few lessons in chiefing to the next wave of recruits (Tories might learn something, too). — Lesson 1: The PMO is not a monolith. Conventional wisdom says the Prime Minister's Office is an all-powerful leviathan, coordinated to send down dictates. Seaborn sees something different: “It's a whole bunch of individual humans with independent thoughts and advice. As soon as I realized that, I was able to work with PMO much better.” JUSTIN TRUDEAU's office sounds a little like a typical workplace — at least in Seaborn's telling. People cross wires, they disagree, they work in silos. "You can't assume that PMO is talking to each other, or that everyone at PMO has the same views," she says. "I've witnessed the most senior staff of PMO give conflicting advice to the PM." — Lesson 2: Meetings are good, actually. Ottawa is replete with boring rooms, uncomfortable chairs and stale glasses of water — the domain of working groups, task forces and ad-hoc committees that churn through lengthy agendas. Here's her take: "On Bay Street, the currency is money, and money is time. You don't want a lot of meetings because they take up time. In Ottawa, the currency is information. You want more meetings, because more meetings transact information." — Lesson 3: Screen time is a problem. "What I won't miss is being addicted to my phone," says Seaborn. "It's a problem." The constant need for politicians, staffers, lobbyists and journalists to trade info "can lead to unhealthy habits that are not good for mental health or sleep or social lives outside of work." (We see you nodding.) — Lesson 4: Hire outsiders. Seaborn had no Hill experience when she was brought into McKenna's office by MARLO RAYNOLDS. She took the same approach, hiring "completely fresh blood" — some newbies were partisan Liberals, others less so. It's all about "bursting" the Ottawa bubble — especially in energy and natural resources, where western and eastern alienation makes the capital feel "distant," she says. — Lesson 5: Hybrid works. Some ministers' chiefs prefer in-person workplaces. Not so much in Wilkinson's office. Seaborn hired staff in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal and Halifax. The rest of the team was in the nation's capital. They collaborated on Slack. Seaborn says the arrangement worked for stakeholders spread all over a giant country. Are you a recovering chief of staff who wields wisdom? We'd love to hear it . HILL JARGON — Seaborn speak the vocab when she arrived in Ottawa. "I'm a lawyer. I didn't know what scrum meant," she says of the ritual in which reporters crowd around a politician and pelt them with questions. Seaborn asked everybody who walked into her office to write new lingo on her whiteboard, which she eventually circulated to new staff. "It's okay that it takes time to understand what the hell's going on as a staffer, because it is a new language that you're learning," she says. Four examples of jargon, including one that'll furrow the brows of cynical journalists: Potted plant (n.) — A minister attending an announcement with no speaking role. 4C (n.) — Abbreviated form of "4 Corners," a meeting between the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office, at least one minister's office and senior bureaucrats. "I was able to learn how to use them strategically to advance policy," Seaborn says. Trash day (n.) — An opportunity to dump a bad news story into a hectic news cycle. "Every single trash day I've done worked like a charm," Seaborn says. Off-cycle (adj.) — Funding that falls outside of the annual budget process. "If you get off-cycle funding, you're a special winner," says Seaborn. "I found that to be a fun game." What's your favorite or most annoying Hill lingo? Tell us! We'll publish an expanded glossary.
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